Blue-plate special

Full-time waitress Ellen Airgood cooks up romance with her debut novel, set in the U.P.

Like every good waitress, Ellen Airgood can recite thedaily specials at the West Bay Diner in Grand Marais with nohesitation. On the day I talked with her they were a cheese and veggieomelet, and fresh whitefish sandwich with an ear of corn.

Airgood, who has been working at this quintessentialdiner in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for more than 20 years, is also anaccomplished writer who published her first novel this year. “South ofSuperior” is about a big-city girl who leaves it all behind to move towhat the publicity hounds at her publisher call “a remote coastalvillage in Michigan’s isolated U.P.” (Yoopers would find thatdescription a real knee-slapper.)

The novel is filled with love, cold shoulders, theclumsiness of fitting in, fierce independent characters, an unusualmystery, a town that helps its own and, of course, a love story —several of them, in fact. In addition to the protagonist Madeline,there’s a grumpy but fair old lady who is sometimes as cold as LakeSuperior itself: often unforgiving, but always mysterious. In fact, thebig lake is a major character in this novel.

In some ways “South of Superior” is not unlike Airgood’sown story. Some 20 years ago she moved from Chicago, where she wasworking for an environmental agency, to Grand Marais, where within sixmonths she married the local diner owner and became full-time baker andwaitress, often working 80-hour weeks, but all the time listening andobserving.

As we talked, Airgood was just coming off her shift atthe West Bay Diner and wanted to make sure that I knew this was not herfirst book.

“I have been writing seriously for a good 18 years,” she said. “This is the first book I published — not wrote.”

The novelist said she had completed several manuscripts for young adult novels before “South of Superior” was published.

Now with the success of “Superior,” she has a young adultnovel due out next summer. The setting: New York City, but once againit features a protagonist who is way out of her comfort zone. This timeit’s a small-town girl who moves to the big city.

“People have been asking me about where’s the sequel to ‘Superior,’” she said. “I tell them it’s not pressing.”

A lot of readers might find Airgood’s characters in“Superior” quirky, but she’s quick to point out that to her everybody’squirky. And she’s not just referring to those she knows in the U.P. “Weare all crazy.”

She said that the residents of both Grand Marais and itsfictional counterpart are not always warm and fuzzy. In fact, theymight not like you at all, but they will help you.

Airgood makes that case in the book when the fictionalcommunity of McAllister rallies behind a young mother and daughter whothey could otherwise care less about after the mother is seriouslyinjured in an automobile accident.

Airgood said when she set out to write “Superior” that she “wanted something my own community would enjoy.”

The Grand Marais community has responded, oftendiscussing the book as they drop into the diner, where the book is soldalongside homemade pie.

“They have embraced my book,” Airgood said.

She says she was relatively untaught when it came towriting, having gotten her degree in science at the University ofMichigan. “My tool kit was pretty sparse, and I didn’t have theconfidence.”

She said it was probably most comfortable for her to write what only can be called lush descriptive scenes of the area.

“It was easiest and the most fun. I always loved to be outdoors and the sense of place is very important to me.”

She said she has been surprised by the positive reaction to the book: “Frankly, a lot doesn’t happen. It’s deceptively simple.”

She gets asked all the time if the characters in the book are modeled after anyone.

“The characters to me are themselves,” she said. “They aren’t components, they are just themselves.”

She said out-of-town visitors to the diner want to knowwhere some of the scenes in the book are set and want to visit the oldhotel, a major feature in the book. They’re out of luck.

“I have to tell them it’s fictional. I just wanted something for Madeline to do.”

As a first-time published author, she said she was mostshocked about how an author is packaged for sale, a process she called“a strange feeling. The author photo — I never wear makeup.”

Pre-publicity has compared Airgood’s “Superior” settingto the quirky 1990s TV show “Northern Exposure.” Sort of, but theauthor might just be on the cusp of becoming the Fannie Flagg of theYoop-eh.

Fudgies (and yes, you can you buy fudge in Grand Marais)better get their Stormy Kromers on when they visit what one of mylifelong Yooper friends calls “The Upper Peculiar.”